CCM Articles Summary week 1-7

Includes all articles relevant for the second year course of IB, weeks 1 - 7

Preview samenvatting (5 van de 62 pagina's)

Cross cultural management Articles summary
Week 1:
Article: Rethinking Cross-Cultural Management in a globalizing
Business World
The term cross-cultural management implies two things:
1. Procedures and policies relating to the management of workforces with different
cultural backgrounds
2. Moderating the impact of cultural differences on the execution of management
tasks
The scientific domain of international, cross-cultural management:
è Definition by Adler (1991):
o Cross-cultural management studies the behavior of people in organizations
around the world and trains people to work in organizations with employee
and client populations
o It describes organizational behavior within countries and cultures
o Compares organizational across cultures and countries
o Seeks to understand and improve the interaction of co-workers, clients,
suppliers, and alliance partners from different countries and cultures
o Expands the scope of domestic management to encompass the international
and multicultural spheres
Culture perceives as a communication barrier or a resource for organizational learning:
è Cross-cultural management is often regarded as a methodology for handling cultural
differences predominantly seen as sources of conflict, friction, or miscommunication
è Three manifestly dominant core problem areas which have challenged international
businesses since the 1950s and 1969s:
1. The ethnocentrism, which binds and blinds
2. The cultural diversity
3. The effects of culture shock, a psychologically disorienting experience, which
combines a sense of being subverted by foreigners and a reeling against the
inexplicable
è This model makes it clear why professional intercultural training has been
characterized as the “culture-shock prevention industry”
è Culture and its consequences must be taken into account, and this, by general
consent, is no easy task
è The challenge lies in treating diversity as resource rather than a threat that is
essential for responding to the demands of a global market economy, for reaping the
ful benefits of cross-border alliances, and for enhancing organizational
è Culture should not simply be seen as an obstacle to doing business across cultures
o It can provide tangible benefits and can be used competitively
Culture as essence:
è In international cross-cultural management literature, culture is more seen as an
area of interest referring to something soft human, unquantifiable, difficult to
account for in rational terms and provided with the label of convenience, namely
culture
è The choice of culture concept strongly influences the overall theoretical framework
and the research design
è It also seems to have a bearing on results and implied recommendations to
companies involved in cross cultural co-operation
è According to Hofstede culture is the software of mind that individuals acquire in
their childhood and in educational institutions through mental programming
è Culture is also often seen as something that members of a community “have” or
“belong to”

The changing face of international management as a discipline and practice:
è Drawbacks of Hofstede´s framework:
o The theoretical framework and methodological procedures have been
uncritically employed as a paradigm where the questions and the dimensions
are used as taken-for-granted assumptions
o His concept of culture equates very strongly with the boundaries of nation
States and this unit of analysis is obsolete in an increasingly interdependent,
yet culturally diverse world
o He failed to see the multicultural realities that already at the time pervaded
many European states such as Great Britain, Belgium, France, and Yugoslavia
è Therefore, management academia and business consultants must break out of the
dependence on Hofstede´s surveys and his cultural categorizations, and rethink the
theoretical and methodological foundation of international management in an
increasingly interdependent, yet cultural diverse business world
The globalization of the business world:
è Throughout the 40 years after the 1960s, international management as an activity
has evolved into a form of work which is becoming increasingly premised on a
capacity for interactive global networking, team working, and organizational learning
è Organizations, if they are to survive, need to learn
o A learning organization is one that is skil ed at creating, acquiring, and
transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new
knowledge and insights
è There must be a new management mentality in globally operating organizations as
they reach out for global efficiency, national responsiveness, and worldwide
leveraging of innovations, and learning while creating a new management mentality
Another conceptualization of culture:
è The social constructionist approach:
o Culture is being seen as being made up of relations, rather than as a stable
system of form and substance
o This suggests that every individual embodies a unique combination of
personal, cultural, and social experiences, and thus that ultimately any
communication and negotiation is intercultural
o It implies that one cannot make cultural analysis whose results can be applied
in the form of general guidelines for managers
o Also, the outcome of col aboration and integration processes between
organizations cannot be predicted with any certainty
Management of multiple cultures:
è The function is to direct flows of information, values, experience, and power and the
global economy towards critical points of interchange, where flows pass from one
cultural ambiance to another
o As the flows enter a new ambiance, their significance and potential for
informing or initiating action are subject to change according to dominant
cultural attributes to be found there: language, worldview, value systems,
and assumptions
è Involves knowledge transfer, organizational learning, and networking

A working definition:
è The core task of cross-cultural management in a globalizing business world is to
facilitate and direct synergistic interaction and learning at interfaces, where
knowledge, values, and experience are transferred into multicultural domains of
implementation
Conclusion:
è The authors are arguing for break away from the traditional way of conceiving and
describing cost cultural management for two main reasons:
1. The prevailing concept of culture-as-essence, which in this scientific context is
heavily associated with national cultures, is out of touch with the theoretical
developments of conceptualizations of culture and identity
o Further, a conceptualization of organizational and national cultures as wel -
defined and homogeneous entities, is out of phase with the new economy,
with its emphasis on networking, organizational learning, and knowledge as
the paramount organizational research resource, which transcends firm,
industry, and national boundaries
2. The new economy requires not just competencies
o A globalizing business world also needs suitable conceptual tools and
analytical approaches of benefit to both researchers and practitioners è Social constructionism Highlights the fact that social problems are constituted either
by professional groups such as researchers, or by other col ective actors
è The authors suggest that future studies might examine three types of narratives:
1. The narrative's told by actors working in or otherwise involved in transnational
companies and organizations
2. The institutional y legitimized narratives of cross-cultural management issues as
they are produced and reproduced in press releases, in managers´ interviews in
public media, and in companies´ annual reports
3. The researchers´ narratives of the management of multiple cultures as they are
presented in empirical studies of transnational companies and organizations è The research literature on cross cultural management is dominated by an essentialist
conception of culture
è The suggested and represented framework would reduce the risk of arriving at
conclusions and recommendations to managers that may be misleading because of
insufficient attention paid to context, cultural differentiation, or fragmentation, or
ongoing cultural change processes
Article: Beyond sophisticated Stereotyping: Cultural sensemaking in
context
Many cultural paradoxes exist across the globe
è The article´s purpose is to focus attention on cultural paradoxes, explain why they
have been over-looked and why they exist, and present a frame- work for making
sense of them
è There are 22 dimensions commonly used to compare cultures, typically presented in
the form of bipolar continua
o These dimensions were developed to yield greater cultural understanding
and allow for cross-cultural comparisons
o An unanticipated consequence of using these dimensions is the danger of
stereotyping entire cultures
Sophisticated stereotyping:
è Rarely do we stop to consider whether we are supplanting one form of stereotyping
for another
è Sophisticated stereotyping is based on theoretical concepts and lacks the negative
attributions often associated with its lower-level counterpart
è It is limiting in the way it constrains individuals' perceptions of behavior in another
culture
è As teachers, researchers, and managers in cross-cultural contexts, we need to
recognize that our original characterizations of other cultures are best guesses that
we need to modify as we gain more experience
è The limitations of sophisticated stereotyping become most evident when we
confront cultural paradoxes
Why don´t we know more about cultural paradoxes?
è The absence of mentioning cultural paradoxes can be explained by: